The Lotus Eaters. Tatjana Soli

figured you’d tell me if you wanted to. I’ll find out soon enough.”

      “Robert said you were one of the charmed. He said everyone tries to stick close to you because they think they will be safe.” As the words came from her mouth, she realized how foolish she sounded, like a child.

      “Poor Robert still believes in the Tooth Fairy.”

      “I already asked him to help me. He refused.”

      “Well, good for him.”

      “He said you have no morals. That you’ll do anything for a picture. That you would have no scruples about bedding a woman or letting her go out in the field.”

      Darrow sat back on his heels a moment, winded. He got up and moved behind her, slowly unfastening the back of her dress, one button at a time. “But you came anyway. I didn’t finish the passage at the restaurant tonight. Last time I was out on a mission, the only paperback I had was a battered copy of The Iliad. I would memorize passages:

       “ ‘Ravishing as she is, let her go home in the long ships and not be left behind…for us and our children down the years an irresistible sorrow.’”

      A growl came from deep within the building, and the electricity struggled back on, first at half power, then all the way. Out of the darkness, plunged into light, she felt confused. Cheap, more like it. Dress half pulled off and her bra showing. Desire shrank. She pulled away, reached to refasten the buttons that had been undone. “We should be going. Robert will be at the hotel…”

      “Really? Did you suddenly get frightened of yourself?” He watched her flushed face as she moved around the room, gathering her things. Not as easy as he had thought. Was he being played? Even so, she intrigued him. Perhaps at long last he had met his match in female form? “Why is it, you suppose, that the people who are supposed to love us the most are precisely the ones who try to stop us doing what we love? Did you leave anyone behind?”

      “No. If there had been anyone that important, I wouldn’t have come. I wouldn’t have been so selfish.”

      “That’s where you’re wrong.”

      “How so?”

      “Sometimes you have to fulfill a promise in order to deserve the love you’re given. Don’t you think it’s a calling to live in danger just to capture the face of those who are suffering? To show their invisible lives to the world?”

      She walked past him and out the door. “I’m leaving…with you or without you.” Down the hallway, she refused to look back, not wanting to acknowledge that if he didn’t follow her by the time she reached the alley, she would most certainly be lost.

      When she and Michael were kids, their favorite game was hide-and-seek. Helen would search for the most difficult hiding places possible, and time would turn into eternities; often she would fall into a daydream and forget she was playing a game. She would wait in the darkened cubby, desperately wanting to be found.

       FOUR Indian County

      At the Bien Hoa Air Base, Helen stood in the shade of a metal storage shed, a faded red stenciled BEWARE above her head; the words below disappeared, peeled off by the sun and rain. The area to be patrolled was considered a cleared one, the search of some marshland and two hamlets routine, establishing presence and nation building.